I grew up in California at a time when swimming was a part of the high school curriculum. A life guard was a full-time faculty member, whose only responsibility was to insure the safety of the students in the water. Well, in a moment of negligence on his part, I almost drowned! Although that moment occurred some 47 years ago, I can still viscerally recall those moments. Death literally stared me in the face!

For many years after that I would not get close to a swimming pool. Perhaps the school waived the state requirement for me so that my family would not press charges. As the years went by, I watched many of my friends enjoy swimming pools and days at the beach while I was frozen with fear.

During all of those years, I had a deep seated longing to become friends with the water. It wasn’t the water that was my enemy; it was my fear of the water that immobilized me. That same water that represented death to me represented profound joy and pleasure to many other people.

So year in and year out I was tortured with a calling from within: I must conquer my fear, or continue to let my fear conquer me.

And so it is for each of us with the “swimming pools” of our lives. The objects themselves are neither good nor bad: they just exist. It is our fear or our willingness to learn how to swim that determines whether or not we will get from the starting point to the finish line.

So, finally, at the age of about 53 I learned how to swim. I had some wonderful teachers  — who were like children to me (“And a little child shall lead them”) — but they taught me how not to be afraid of the water. One of the most important aspects they taught me was to relax and float on my back. I could not do that if I had any amount of tension and/or distrust. It is imperative that I let go and trust the water. The water really will take care of me, but only if I let it. That is perhaps the most difficult aspect, because, as a leader, I am so accustomed to being in control. The more I try to be in control, the more I will sink.

Now my fear of the water was not unjustified. Fear has its place in our lives. Its function is to warn us of possible harm. If a child just gets in the ocean without knowing how to swim, they will drown. My teachers were my angels that surrounded me with love and guidance, showing me the things I needed to do to make the water my friend. What is more, they let me know that they would always be there to protect me, in case I got in trouble.

The other day, some friends introduced me to their newborn baby. The experience opened my eyes anew to the wonder of human growth and potential. Our futures are not set in stone.

A newborn baby certainly has encoded characteristics such as the physical aspects of race. The child’s genetics and prenatal experiences will influence personality and health. Nationality, family and birth order are already determined.

To a newborn baby, however, none of these characteristics has any meaning. Physical characteristics such as gender and eye color have no context in which to operate. Social connections and position do not yet exist to someone who cannot yet recognize a face. There is no wealth, no power and only the barest, early traces of personality in a newborn. Everything else is still raw, unshaped potential.

As we grow from infancy to adult, it is the interaction of genetics and circumstances that determines how our human potential develops. These interactions are all shaped and governed by people. At first, our families are the ones who influence and provide meaning to our lives. They provide for or fail to provide for our needs. They teach us what it means to be human, they distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior, and they provide us with a foundation on how to interact with other people. Over time, the family’s role in shaping us fades more into the background as the rest of society takes an increasing role. Teachers, religious institutions, the media and peers all contend with parents for influence in shaping our lives, until we ourselves as adolescents emerge as individuals and begin truly to make decisions for ourselves. It is this capacity to make one’s own decisions on values and behavior that separates adults from children, and it is how we make those decisions that reveals our character.

What we tend to forget, however, is that we are always still that newborn baby, consisting of nothing but potential. Yes, we have characteristics because of our pasts and our DNA, but those only have meaning if we give it to them. We always have the option to be reborn – to set aside the teachings and determinations provided by parents and culture, and to find new ways to interpret the circumstances of our lives. We do not have to be who others say we are; as adults, we have the power to make our own decisions. We do not have to follow the paths provided to us; we can go in new directions and can establish new paths for others to follow.

In more pragmatic terms, as adults, we have the power to look at the institutions and attitudes in our lives, and to either accept them, reject them, change them or replace them. In fact, if we live in a free and open society, we have the responsibility to examine these systems and to adjust them as necessary. As adults, we decide the values we hold, and we choose how to express those values in our businesses, our government, our religious practices and our arts. We do not have to mimic what we have inherited from our parents; we have the ability and power to build new ways of living that are more true to our chosen values. We are adults. We make our own decisions. We are born with endless potential, and that potential is still here. We can become whomever we want to be.